Church

Psalm 103: What Mick Jagger Could Learn from the Sweet Psalmist of Israel

/ davidsschrock

This week begins my shared responsibility of writing “The Wednesday Word” at wellumscouples.com.  This is a weekly summary of the teaching in our sunday school class taught by Dr. Steve Wellum.  Here is the intro to my first post which considers Psalm 103.

The Rolling Stones once lamented, “I can’t get no satisfaction!” While blaming their disaffected state on hollow advertisements, insufficient information, and disillusioned attempts at sex and romance, it is more likely that their lyrics show the emptying effects of hedonistic pleasure-seeking in a fallen and fleeting world. Sadly, this unsatisfied state of living is not isolated to over-the-hill rockers. Too many Christians can resonate with their words and draw comfort from their lyrics, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” Whether due to distraction or disappointment, boredom or busyness, preoccupation with worldly-pleasures or too little reflection on the blessings of the Lord, many Christians and many of us are tempted to turn from sacrifices of praise to downloaded iPods seeking to medicate our pain. There must be a better way!

Psalm 103 points to that better way. To read how, go to wellumscouples.com or just go read Psalm 103.

Sola Deo Gloria, dss

Walk in the Way of Wisdom: Be Slow to Anger

/ davidsschrock

James, a bond-servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, writes: “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.  For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires” (1:19-20).

Last Wednesday, I had the privilege of teaching the Open Bible Study at my church, Ninth and O Baptist.  The assigned topic was “Anger,” and I taught from James 1:19-27.  After surveying the complexities of anger throughout Scripture we landed here because of James’ short, yet powerful, admonition to throw off the filthiness of anger and to embrace the word which can save your soul (v. 21). 

There is much to be heard in James about anger, but it is apparent that he is not writing anything novel.  He draws heavily on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) and the wisdom of the Old Testament.   Below is a list of Proverbs that surely informed James understanding of anger and speech, wisdom and foolishness, and the intricate relationships between them.  They call us who want to walk in the way of wisdom to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.  Read them slowly and ask: Does my life display wisdom or foolishness? 

(The italicized words are the verse, ESV.  What follows the “=” attempts to synthesize the proverb).

Proverbs
12:15 The way of the fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice = listening quells anger

12:16The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult = foolish anger is not hidden

14:17 A man of quicker temper acts foolishly, and a man of evil devices is hated = sudden anger is foolish

14:29 Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly

15:1 A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger = anger provokes more anger

15:18 A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention = patient assuages anger

15:32 Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence.

16:32 Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city = those who possess the earth through force, violence, and oppression are in the end small men

19:11 Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is to his glory to overlook an offense = anger ruins reputations, while controlling anger gains honor

19:19 A man of great wrath will pay the penalty, for if you deliver him, you will only have to do it again = anger is not a isolated incident; it is a pattern, a way of life, a means of gaining ground in life

19:20 Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future.

20:2 Whoever provokes [terrible king] to anger forfeits his life = anger + power = death for the object of wrath

21:14 A gift in secret averts anger, and a concealed bribe, strong wrath = anger is assuaged through by payment

21:5 The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.

22:24f Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with wrathful man; lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare = the result of anger is a snare (i.e. entrapment, bondage, and death)

25:8 What your eyes have seen do not hastily bring into court, for what will you do in the end when your neighbor puts you to shame? = Hasty accusations fail to gather all the facts and result in personal shame

27:4 Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy? = the characteristic that makes anger so dangerous is the fact that what may appear controlled is in fact intractable

28:20 A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.

29:22 A man of wrath stirs up strife, and one given to anger causes much transgression = the damning effects of anger are far reaching because one man’s anger promotes sin in the lives of others

30:33 For pressing milk produces curds, pressing the nose produces blood, and pressing anger produces strife = the fruit of anger is strife (i.e. division, discord, and the separation of relationships)

Ecclesiastes
5:1 Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools…be not rash with you mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and your are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few.

7:8-9 Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient spirit is better than the proud spirit;
Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools = anger is complicit with foolishness, the fool becomes angry; anger is not like something spilt on the hand or something stepped in by the foot, which can easily be removed or cleansed. Anger roots itself deep within the soul of the (wo)man and becomes lodged. It ensnares! Anger is a way of life, not easily discarded and one that arises in all sorts of unbecoming ways, proving a man’s folly.

May we flee folly and run to the all-wise one, Jesus Christ!

Sola Deo Gloria, dss

Acts 13:13-41 (pt. 1: Introduction & Creation)

/ davidsschrock
Recently, I had the privilege of teaching in the Senior Saints ABF (Adult Bible Fellowship, i.e. Sunday School) at 9th & O Baptist Church. They have been going through the book of Acts, and my assignment was Acts 13-14. Luke’s account of the church of Antioch and Paul’s first missionary journey are amazing in that within an incredibly short time, the region of Galatia which had not yet heard the gospel had established churches with elders (14:23). It shows the power of the gospel to change lives and to take root in a ripe culture; moreover it shows the fruit of faithful and bold messengers of the gospel.

My threefold layout of the passage which followed thematic lines–it is difficult to do verse-by-verse exposition of two chapters in only 45 minutes–was this: The Church that Sends; The Gospel that Saves; and the Saints who Suffer. Below is the first of three installments of my exposition of Acts 13:13-41. In it Paul lays out with clarity and rigorous attention to the OT, the gospel of Jesus Christ. His message is strikingly biblical-theological, and it is a model of preaching excellence. May we, as students of the word, study its form and content and learn how to better share the gospel.

Paul’s sermon in Acts 13:13-41 is one of many recorded by Luke in his narrative (cf. Acts 14, 17, 20). It is like Peter’s sermons in the way that it employs OT Scripture and provides Christocentric interpretations; it is like Stephen’s in Acts 7 as it covers so much OT history, but in its own right it is very Pauline, espousing themes and theology found later in his epistles.

It is important to realize that this sermon in Acts contains the contents of the gospel to which Paul refers in Galatians 1. In his excoriating letter, he contrasts “his” gospel with the gospel(s) that are being erroneously advocated by false teachers. Since Acts 13 records the gospel which Paul preached to the Galatians, it is vital to follow his train of thought and his Christocentric exposition to understand Paul’s reasoning in his subsequent letter to the Galatians. In Acts, Luke gives us a full report of Paul’s gospel, drawing our attention to the highpoints of his message and allowing us to make the intratextual connections necessary to perceive the Pauline gospel. So with that said, lets consider Paul’s gospel message.

Waiting for the Scripture to be read (v. 15a) and the invitation to be given (v. 15b), Paul, in verse 16, stands to explain the text read in light of Jesus Christ (cf. Luke 24:27, 44-46). From his opening line, it is clear that he addresses a mixed audience of Jews and Gentile God-fearers, “Men of Israel and you who fear God, listen.”

Gaining his audience’s attention, Paul starts in Genesis with a reference to YHWH’s gracious selection of Abraham and his kin from the nations, “The God of this people Israel chose our fathers”. Calling the patriarch from idolatry, the God of Israel’s covenantal love is immediately highlighted. Contrary to modernist religious teachers who say that spirituality and religion are sociological and psychological constructs, God revealed himself to Abraham in history and chose him to be the father of his blessed people. To Abraham and those united to him, he promised a land, untold blessings, a heritage, and his own personal presence in their midst (cf. Gen. 12:1-3; 15:4-7; 17:1-8). The history of Israel chronicles the working out of these covenantal promises.

This Abrahamic beginning implies with it the reality of creation ex nihilo. For the God who called Abraham is the same God who created the heavens and the earth. This is apparent in the narrative of Genesis, where chapters 1-11, which speak about the origin of humanity, are linked via Abraham with chapters 12-50, which initiate God’s plan of redemptive history. Likewise, Paul’s preaching in Acts 14 and 17 explicitly refers to the God of Israel as the God who created all things. He says of YHWH in Lystra that he is the “living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them” (14:16). Clearly, God is the unique Maker of all creation. Thus Paul’s gospel message is founded in creation. He does not demean the corporeal and physical nature of our world. Instead, he roots the origin of creation in the divine design of YHWH, the God of Israel.

This, in and of itself, is good news. God created a bountiful world, one designed to provide pleasures and provisions for all God’s creatures. And though the world, as we know it, contains horrors that undulate with beauty, it was not always that way (cf. Gen 1-2), nor will it always be that way (cf. Rev. 21-22). Taking creation (and its fall) into account, the gospel is not opposed to the inhabitable world. Rather, through redemption, it goes to show how all creation is being renewed and directed on a course towards new creation. For as we will see, the message of the gospel which begins with creation in the Garden of Eden, will culminate in the new creation’s garden-city, the New Jerusalem.

(More to follow…)

Sola Deo Gloria, dss

What Martyn Lloyd-Jones has to say to Emergents and the Evangelical Left

/ davidsschrock

Reading books from earlier generations is helpful in evaluating the proclivities and overemphases of our own generation.  Reading Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones Preaching and Preachershas reminded me of that truth this week.  For in his classic work on preaching, the good doctor reflects on the condition of preaching and its primacy within the Christian church.  Informed by the timeless wisdom of the Scriptures, he speaks to many cultural trends sweeping through evangelicalism today.  In particular, he addresses emergent tendencies to exchange preaching for dialogue and the evangelical left’s push to advance social justice, environmental care, economic revision, and other secondary matters to the forefront.

Considering the manner in which we speak about God, Lloyd-Jones recalls Moses encounter with God at the burning bush (Ex. 3:1-6), and he says, “our attitude [in how we approach God] is more important than anything we do in detail as we are reminded in the Epistle to the Hebrews, God is always to be approached ‘with reverence and with godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire’ (47).   The eminent pastor goes on to explain:

To me this is a very vital matter.  To discuss the being of God in a casual manner, lounging in an armchair, smoking a pipe or a cigarette or a cigar, is to me something that we should never allow, because God, as I say, is not a kind of philosophic X or a concept (47).

While surely not denying the place of Christian conversation about the things of God, Lloyd-Jones admonition to preach the Word with fear and trembling is forceful.   He challenges preachers seeking to rightly divide the Word to also faithfully present the Word as a divinely authorized message from God himself.   The manner is as important as the means.  Explication of the Scriptures devoid of proper gravity minimizes divine authority.  In Lloyd-Jones estimation, this kind of preaching fails to convey the seriousness of the message we preach.  This raises a series of questions for budding preachers to consider:

What kind of message does it send  when a sanctuary is converted into living room?  Or what is the effect on the church when pulpits are replaced with bar stools?   Or how is the message of God perceived when the preacher dons a pair of sandles and a hawaiian shirt?  Surely, these things have little bearing on the content of the message, but might they distort the seriousness of the Scriptures?  The good doctor thinks that such mishandling of God’s Word is a case of malpractice.

Lloyd-Jones book also confronts another modern issue, namely the promotion of a socialized gospel.  In an age where evangelicalism sees to be splintering and the evangelical left calls for renewed attention to matters of society and culture, Lloyd-Jones words remind us of Christ’s central mission and the church’s singular purpose–to proclaim the gospel of salvation.  Lloyd Jones writes:

Take all this new interest in the social application of the Gospel, and the idea of going to live amongst the people and to talk politics and to enter into their social affairs and so on [Read: incarnational ministry and missional church]…The argument was that the old evangelical preaching of the Gospel was too personal [i.e. individual], too simple, that it did not deal with the social problems and conditions.  It was a part, of course, of the liberal, modernit, higher-critical view of the Scriptures and of our Lord….The very thing that is regarded as so new today, and what is regarded as the primary task of the Church, is something that has already been tried, and tried with great thoroughness in the early part of the century (33).

Lloyd-Jones reminds us that a socially-minded gospel, fueled by liberalism, has “already been tried.”  Not surprisingly, the idea of socializing the gospel, incarnating the church into the clothes of the culture, is not new.  Though emerging churches and leftist evangelicals may think of themselves as cutting edge, Lloyd-Jones replies in the words of Solomon “there is nothing new under the sun.”  He continues:

I have not hesitation in asserting that was largely responsible for emptying the churches in Great Britain was the ‘social gospel’ preaching and the institutional church. [Why?]  The people rightly argued in this way, that if the business of the Church was really just to preach a form of political and social reform and pacifism then the Church was not really necessary, for all the could be done throught the political agencies (34).

Lloyd-Jones’ warning here is that when Christians fail to uphold the central message of the Bible, the message of forgiveness and eternal life purchased on the cross of Christ, the church is undone.  When emphases are on this world only, and fail to consider the eternal realities of heaven and hell; or when the exclusive message of Jesus salvation is broaden to some kind of pluralism or universal inclusivism, as are growing among even evangelicals today, then the long-term result will ultimately be empty churches.  He offers a better, more biblical way.

My objection to the substitution of a socio-political interest for the preaching of the Gospel can be stated more positively.  This concern about the social and political conditions, and about the happiness of the individual and so on, has always been dealt with most effectively when you have had reformation and revival and true preaching in the Christian church.  I would go further and suggest that it is the Christian Church that has made the greatest contribution throughout the centuries to the solution of these very problems.  The modern man is very ignorant of history; he does not know that the hospitals originally came through the church… The same thing is true of education…The same is true of Poor Law Relief and the mitigation of the sufferings of people who were enduring poverty (35-36).

My argument is that when the Church performs her primary task these other things invariably result from it…The other people talk a great deal about the political and social conditions but do little about them.  It is the activity of the Church that reallys deals with the situation and produces enduring and permanent results.  So I argue that even from the pragmatic standpoint it can be demonstrated that you must keep preaching [the gospel:God, man, Christ, response] in the primary and cental position (36).

May we hear the words of this faithful preacher, evaluate our own commitment to gospel proclamation by them, and go forth preaching with greater boldness and clarity.

Corn Creek Baptist Church and the Spiritual Gift of Listening

/ davidsschrock / 2 Comments

This morning my wife and I had the privilege of worshiping with Corn Creek Baptist Church.  Located in the rolling hills of Northern Kentucky just off the Ohio River, it is a church with a long history, as indicated by the cemetery plot in back.  The people were so kind and welcoming, and those to whom we spoke indicated that they had been in that area and at that church for their whole life.  Aaron O’Kelly is the pastor and a seminary student at Southern, and someone who kindly allowed me to come and preach to his congregation while away in Texas.

Preaching there this morning reminded me of the honor it is to serve churches like CCBC who have for decades permitted young seminarians from Southern to come and fill their pulpits.   Reflecting on this, it strikes me that so many of these churches are gifts to young men cutting their teeth on the preaching of God’s word.   And I wonder how many even know of their service to the kingdom.  So many of these churches endure the constant rotation of young men who come to seminary, take a church (for 1-5 years, perhaps), and then move on to another mission field or congregation somewhere beyond Louisville.

And while the effects of our rotating ministry must be soberly considered by us young preachers, we must at the same time, be grateful for these churches who sacrifice and endure with our developing ministries.  We ought thank them publicly and before the Lord for their investment into the church at large for allowing people like me to come and open God’s word.  Such kind opportunities have been invaluable in my life and in the lives of thousands of current and future pastors, missionaries, and preachers of gospel.   In this service then, these churches clearly have a gift of listening.

I can think of countless moments this morning where improvements could have been made and points clarified, and where a more seasoned pastor could have better exposited in the text.  Yet, with grace and patience the people from Corn Creek allowed me to go on.  So that despite my youth, the Word was preached, Christ was lifted up, the people were encouraged (so they kindly said), and God  was honored.  He was honored both in the preaching of and in the listening to the Word.   For aspiring pastors and young seminarians, may we pause and give praise for the countless rural and street corner churches who permit us to lisp in their presence; and may  those who fill their pulpits labor hard to honor them with Christ-centered sermons and faithful biblical exposition.  May we not forget or diminish their longstanding ministry of serving the church as the incubator of young preachers.  Truly, if seminary, etymologically speaking, is a seedbed, then churches like Corn Creek are incubators and greenhouses for developing pastors.  In this unique role, they serve the church at large and build up the kingdom.

Corn Creek Baptist Church, thank you for your ministry of listening to and loving on a young preacher like myself.  Know that churches all over the globe are built up because of your unique ministry!

Sola Dei Gloria, dss